I didn't say it was an accident. Do you know why they did this? If you are old enough to remember, before we had Giant Magnetoresistive Head technology, the improvements in hard disc capacity weren't always fast. There was a race to see who could hit 1 GB first. I can't remember which company changed the measuring standard first, but they did it so that their drive would be the first out with 1 GB, but this time it wasn't really a gigabyte, it was a billion bytes. Then, the other manufacturers followed suit to say they had competetive products and bam, suddenly everyone carried the -newly measured- gigabyte drives. I remember distinctly when they first came out they were like 1.02 GB(billions of bytes). I say, if they all do it the same, who cares. Unfortunately, the lawyers and consumer activists don't see it my way.
The problem with etymology here is that it's true giga has always been a metric for 1 billion, it wasn't a widely used word. Before computers, the most widely used reference of giga was gigahertz. Even then, equipment operating in the Ghz wasn't widely used aside from telecommunications equipment. So, the fact remains that giga was a prefix sufficiently large that the common person didn't use it often or even know it's meaning. This meant that it was easily redefined by the computer industry to mean 2^30. Now, because people are raising a stink about it, NIST has made up these rediculous prefixes that no one will use to make it 'right'. The problem is that once a word has a de-facto meaning(regardless of etymology or technical correctness), there is a large amount of social inertia to overcome to introduce the new word with a definition already covered by a word in usage.
The funny part about it is in the English language, and even more so in a few other languages, a single word can have multiple meanings depending on it's usage context. The word gigabyte can indeed mean 1E9 or 2^30 depending on it's usage. As it is right now, the only usage for the common person to say gigabyte is in respect to a hard disc(soon, memory will be in GB as well, but people will understand that's different).
In my opinion, if HD manufacturers want to use the definition that makes their drive look bigger, that's fine as long as it is printed on the box that they used one of the commonly used definitions for GB. In any case, the average consumer has neither the capacity nor the desire to imagine a number as large as 126,400,000,000. In either case, they will have a lot of storage space and because all HD manufacturers are rating the drive capacity the same, they will be able to compare the drives against the drives of other brands and make a decision as to which is larger.
I should start a new university, where the new major will be: Suing People. You got beat to it. Most law schools already have fantastic litigation courses.
Remember McDonalds with the old lady burning herself with coffee? She won and McDonald had to become captain obvious with that label on the the coffee cup.
Why does everyone mention this and no one actually knows all of the facts. She suffered second degree burns from her hips to her knees with permanent neurological damage. She was handed a coffee cup without the lid being fully seated properly causing the lid to fall off. $1,000,000 was appropriate, IMHO.
The idea here isn't to create an X alternative, but an X replacement. Something modern, fast, light. I know everyone is going to chime in with 'XFree86 is good enough. And it isn't bloated or slow'. It is an excellent piece of software, but it isn't as fast as it could be. There are commercial X11 servers for Linux that really are as fast as advertised, I've seen it in person. Another of the 'problems' with XFree86, and even commercial X11 servers is that they don't take advantage of modern GPU's. Granted, OpenGL isn't an ideal method of rendering *everything*, but for some things, it would offload much of the graphics subsystem from the CPU. There are cases where OpenGL would be much slower, but with a little smart programming, this can be avoided. OpenGL also has the added benefit of adding some eye-candy features like transparency without taxing the CPU. Anti-aliased vector fonts are easy with OpenGL.
The only problem I see here, besides the usage of XML(it's flexible and easy to program, but too large as a metadata medium), is that many have tried this before and failed. Only time will tell.
I'll give it a week before declaring it 'YetAnotherDOA sourceforge project'.
I dunno about forecasts. But if they hooked up a couple of them in the same country it'd probably bring down the power grid:-}
Not good.
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NYT on RFID
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I have to admit, I can see why retailers would want to exploit RFID tags. It would save them a lot of money in labor, as well as reducing the load on any loss prevention manager. This boils down to either more profits or lower consumer costs.
I have three opinions about them.
1) Everything you buy that contains an RFID tag must be properly labeled. The consumer should know what they are buying.
2) There should be a way to easily disable them after taking the product home. Ideally, they should be deactivated on your way out the door, but there are complications(non-technical) hindering the store's choices.
3) Any product that has a unique characteristic or property shouldn't have an RFID tag. For instance, if I go to the local Sears, Home Depot, Lowes, whatever and buy a personal fire safe(w/o the changeable combinations), I wouldn't want the safe to have it's combination somewhere indexed to the RFID chip's serial number. There is a greater security risk here, this is but one example.
Even if they were right, I would still feel contempt for the way that they have mannered themselves. If they are right, and they have known for a year that Linux had offending code, they still did nothing to mitigate the damages done to their company. I feel the company is obviously damaged anyways; anyone who read their 10Q knows it to be true. If there were offending code in Linux, it is being made a scapegoat for the failing business that is SCO.
Is SCO right? Only time will tell. When they begin to attempt the extortion of Linux users and companies next month, the backlash will start a series of actions that will have some finality to this matter. And from that point forward, Linux will either repair, remove, and move on, or Linux users of the world will laugh SCO right out of the stock market and the IT world.
For me, I don't care which happens as long as this is over. Neither outcome will affect me personally. Worst case scenario, my kernel is illegal and I fix it myself or download a patched kernel. Could I continue using a bad kernel without getting caught?
Probably. But I won't. I, like most other Linux users, take pride in OSS.
I make no judgements. I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was making an observation of the present. I fully agree with you that. The only sad part is for those whom a good education isn't available. I don't support communism - That encourages everyone to work as little as possible leading to an overall loss of productivity. I fully support capitalism. I just think the government should do more to provide an adequate education giving people the *opportunity* to do something with themselves. I'll take myself as an example:
I'm pretty intelligent. I have an IQ of 151. I was born to a very poor family, who is now very well off. I don't see a dime of it. I'm still broke, but doing better for myself than my parents did for me when I lived with them. I was given a very thorough education, right up to high school. Unfortunately, I had to work all through high school, all while amassing debt for things like a car, credit cards to furnish my apartment, this that and the other thing. When you have to pay your way while doing the whole education thing, it sets a person up very poorly for going to college. I did get a state grant, but it didn't get me very far. I found myself having to work even more to pay off the debt I worked up during high school while trying to attend college.
I bet you can guess how that worked out. Now, a lot of my friends who had more well off parents are graduating college, getting decent(not great) jobs, making their $32-45K meanwhile I'm stuck at a shit job barely paying off the debt I have. At the rate things are moving, I should be able to start college again in the next 2-3 years. This time, with zero debt and a little more free time. The sad thing is I'm a pretty good programmer in C/C++. I'm an experienced web designer who once made a lot of money off of one good contract, but then business declined, never found good work again. I'm decent in PHP, great in ASP/VBScript, fairly versed in Javascript/DOM2, I know a quite a lot about SQL. And I have no degree. That's why I work a shit job in manufacturing. Because I didn't have the ability to go to college. It should be more accessible, but the trend is it is getting *less* accessible. Tuition goes up as local/state colleges lose funding, class schedules are cut, classes get larger, teachers are slightly more apathetic. Overall, the quality is down and the price is up. Now where's that leave me when I can finally afford to get my BS in EE(that's what I really want)?
Even moreso now, it is rare that an uneducated person ends up being rich. In the past, a hard worker with a few lucky breaks could do very well. Now, you must have one of two things:
1) Really good luck 2) A good education
Even a very intelligent person these days has a hard time getting anywhere without a degree. Yet, if your parents didn't do well, you probably won't either. Thus, the cycle repeats.
Excellent post. I have a hard time remembering facts sometimes, but this would seem to support both of our anecdotal evidence.
Part of the reason the poor can afford more now is due to technological and manufacturing advances. Better cars for cheaper. TV sets for rock bottom prices. Yes, even the poor can buy what would have been luxuries 40 years ago. But, as this article states, they are still doing worse off than years ago.
Interestingly enough Bill G. has more than twice what Paul Allen has in his piggy bank, but Paul Allen seems to be in the newspaper around here(Pacific Northwest) a lot more than Bill. Usually, it's either because he owns the Portland Trailblazers, or it's because he gave a bunch of money to some random charity. He seems like a really good guy.
Re:I'll tell you what I would do with all that mon
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Tech Rich Get Richer
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· Score: 1
Shoot, I've had that many times. For free.
Now three girls at once? I'm still looking. I keep it on my christmas list, but my roommates keep telling me they can't find another girl whose worthy;-{
Because in the past, it was Media tycoons, publishers, industrialists, bankers who got rich. It often took them their entire lives, their childrens lives. It was 'old money'. Now, it seems many on this list managed to go from zero to super rich in a matter of a few years. Look at Bill Gates. He hasn't always been rich, now he has more money than anybody. It seems the seperation between rich and poor is getting far wider. Most people scrape by, day by day, week at a time. The super rich have more money than they could spend in a lifetime, 10 lifetimes. This isn't the bad part, the world has always been like this. The bad part, it seems the middle class seems to be getting smaller. In times of recession, those who were once well to do are now finding themselves just as broke as the rest of us while the super rich just keep getting even more obscenely wealthy. And it is always on the backs of the poor that they tread.
Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before. Really? Are you sure? The socioeconomic seperation that existed in the 60's and 70's wasn't nearly as pronounced as it is today. Have you seen the unemployment rate recently? Millions of jobless people. Declining benefits, declining salaries, shaky job security, citizen's apathy for the declining political system. I can't say I'd agree with you.
Ahem, Slackware is very much old-school. A lot of it, especially the scripts are very obviously BSD-ish, which would make it exactly 'the way things used to be done'. Anyone coming from a commercial Unix would find the transition easiest with Slackware. You are right in that Gentoo is a little off the wall, but Slackware is very traditional in many aspects.
For a RedHat user, you sure don't seem to like much about the way it's set up. You sound like a hands-on, technically inclined person. IMO, you should consider Slackware if you decide to try anything else. It is by far the most stable of all the distributions out there and if you know anything about the workings of Linux, you will find it very easy. All of the packages are up to date and easy to install. I don't personally like RPM either, so rpm2tgz is my friend. It does include RPM if you ever need it though. The BSD style init scripts are easy to configure. The file placement scheme is very well thought out, making modifications, program install/updates, whatever a breeze. The distro setup program is very easy to use making package selection a no-brainer, as well as setting up networking, pretty console fonts, whatever else you need.
For anyone who want's to get into the inner workings of Linux and really understand what's going on 'under the hood' so to speak, Slackware is a good place to start. It's easy to use, yet flexible enough to get real work done. What more could you ask for? </plug>
The point of this regulation wasn't to limit the states rights, it is to protect the citizens from unfair and discriminatory taxing. That's always a good thing. If this goes through, states can still tax you on things like online shopping, as long as it's a sales tax that applies to everyone. I would hate to go to amazon or ebay and get a message that they were collecting a 'Special Internet Tax' for whatever state of %(arbitrary#). Imagine checking your DSL or cable bill and finding a special tax line:
Network Access Tax: $23.30 @.005 per MB
I don't think many people would put up with it. It's good that this bill came along. Along the same lines, it's also sad that they had to specifically prevent states from implementing discriminatory taxes as sources of revenue. Look at the Seattle dime espresso tax and the turnout; 67% of citizens said no. If states went along and implemented an internet usage tax, it's nearly a sure bet that zero of that revenue would be used to support the internet. It would have been especially unfair.
I've done this once, and I'll never do it again. But...
It was organized. I had one tail about a half mile behind me for part of the journey and one lead who left several minutes before me. We had radios to keep in constant communication. The lead informed me of road and weather conditions, presence of police or other cars, slick spots, pot holes, and gravel. This was also on a route on I84 that I had driven several dozen times so I knew every turn. I didn't attempt any turns at 167, I slowed to about 110 for the corners. I did end up getting a ticket despite having a lead car. I was paced by air patrol at 130+, according to the state patrol officer that pulled me over. The lead car didn't spot the patrol car because they were hidden behind a sign on an off-ramp. I was gunned at 93 and got a fat ticket. He complemented me on my car, said I was a good driver, and insulted my judgement to try this on this particular interstate. He did mention that typically, people that do this go into southern Oregon where there are many infrequently patrolled and straight highways. At the same time, he also mentioned that if he'd gunned me at 100+, the wreckless driving would have been automatic and he would have taken my car and possibly my license. As it turned out, I got nothing more than a excess speed ticket and the loss of two points off my license. This was all done in my Supra, with brand new, balanced Y speed rated tires which are positively the weakest link in any road car at this speed.
Was it dangerous? Hell yes, but not necessarily more dangerous than any sanctioned road race and far, far safer than the stupid street racers I'm surounded by in my home town. If you don't believe me, check out sanctioned races like the Silver State Classic in Nevada. That particular race is organized every year with the permission of and help from Nevada State Patrol.
You are correct that there are always factors not under the driver's control and that is a risk. It was minimized in every way possible and it turned out ok. For some, it doesn't and they crash and burn. When I made the decision to try this, I decided at the same time that the only person I was willing to endanger was myself. I was actually in a safer position than the lead car who limited their speed to just over 100 MPH. This person had also driven this section of the freeway many times, but this didn't negate much of the danger of driving that fast.
All I can say now is, it was fun once. Never again.
Darl McBride has got to be the most flamboyant retarded CEO ever. I don't mean that funny-ha-ha either. He really is very deluded.
On a side note, anyone who does business related to Linux can sue SCO, and probably win. I'm surprised a gag order hasn't been ordered. Usually, when a lawsuit is filed, both parties are very hush-hush because if they lose, any statements made before the judgement regarding the outcome can become a liability. On that note, SCO has racked up a hell of a lot of liability. Red Hat is very much within their right as SCO is interfering with the business operations of any company that relies on Linux. If(when?) SCO loses their lawsuit against IBM, every press release regarding the copyright violations of SysV code in Linux will become libelous, and the company will sink like a concrete shoed mobster, straight to the bottom. SCO's activity during the last six months may also land Darl in jail for mail fraud(Linux license sale offers or requests by mail). Darl should be careful what he says. Everyone in the Linux community was a little miffed at first because it appeared that IBM wasn't vocally supporting the community when in reality, they were in cautious mode.
Win or lose, right or wrong, I just don't care. Even if SCO wins(doubtful, SCO's actions are like a fireant biting a gorilla:), I know the Linux community will replace as needed and carry on. Life will go on. I just wish SCO, and more specifically Darl McBride, would STFU until the lawsuits are settled. I certainly can't be the only person sick to death of hearing about SCO every fucking day.
I drive a pimped out 88 Toyota Supra Turbo with over 370 hp. I've never gone 215, but I've seen others do it in person(Top Fuel dragsters at Woodburn dragstrip in Oregon state). I've also taken my supra to 167 MPH on Interstate 84. I didn't kill anyone. Not even close, because I am a smart driver. When you are the only one on the road, suicide is the worst that can happen.
Having read about this case in my local newspaper, I think the police were actually correct in their usage of this technology and the judge fouled it up. The judge ruled that the warrant for the usage of the GPS tracker wasn't right. That's messed up. The police suspected that this guy killed a(his?) kid so they got a warrant and put a GPS tracker on his car. The guy leads them out to where he buried the body.
He says he found the child dead already, in bed. Got scared. Went out and buried the body. Right. I believe it, don't you?
I think this is a case of technology being useful when applied lawfully. As long as there is judicial protection from unlawful surveilance, I'm all for this new technology. With a proper warrant, this might be a highly effective tool.
It's hard to make a distinction here, as some convicted sex offenders are required to carry GPS monitors on their ankles. This shouldn't be any different.
I'm not sure if it's just in my home state or this is federal law, but my employer is required to keep all company-issued applications for employment on file for a minimum of one year. This is *a law*. I think it's WA state law, but it could be federal. Resumes are not kept on file unless the employee is hired, and even then only for reference.
Nah... There's well over 1 billion people out there that prove every day that you don't have to eat very often to live. If famine is good enough for a billion people, why not give it a try for a day or two, try it on for size.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say it was an accident. Do you know why they did this? If you are old enough to remember, before we had Giant Magnetoresistive Head technology, the improvements in hard disc capacity weren't always fast. There was a race to see who could hit 1 GB first. I can't remember which company changed the measuring standard first, but they did it so that their drive would be the first out with 1 GB, but this time it wasn't really a gigabyte, it was a billion bytes. Then, the other manufacturers followed suit to say they had competetive products and bam, suddenly everyone carried the -newly measured- gigabyte drives. I remember distinctly when they first came out they were like 1.02 GB(billions of bytes). I say, if they all do it the same, who cares. Unfortunately, the lawyers and consumer activists don't see it my way.
This is actually *newsworthy*. I was starting to have withdrawls.
This should have a big impact on small towns where expensive cellular equipment isn't cost effective.
The problem with etymology here is that it's true giga has always been a metric for 1 billion, it wasn't a widely used word. Before computers, the most widely used reference of giga was gigahertz. Even then, equipment operating in the Ghz wasn't widely used aside from telecommunications equipment. So, the fact remains that giga was a prefix sufficiently large that the common person didn't use it often or even know it's meaning. This meant that it was easily redefined by the computer industry to mean 2^30. Now, because people are raising a stink about it, NIST has made up these rediculous prefixes that no one will use to make it 'right'. The problem is that once a word has a de-facto meaning(regardless of etymology or technical correctness), there is a large amount of social inertia to overcome to introduce the new word with a definition already covered by a word in usage.
The funny part about it is in the English language, and even more so in a few other languages, a single word can have multiple meanings depending on it's usage context. The word gigabyte can indeed mean 1E9 or 2^30 depending on it's usage. As it is right now, the only usage for the common person to say gigabyte is in respect to a hard disc(soon, memory will be in GB as well, but people will understand that's different).
In my opinion, if HD manufacturers want to use the definition that makes their drive look bigger, that's fine as long as it is printed on the box that they used one of the commonly used definitions for GB. In any case, the average consumer has neither the capacity nor the desire to imagine a number as large as 126,400,000,000. In either case, they will have a lot of storage space and because all HD manufacturers are rating the drive capacity the same, they will be able to compare the drives against the drives of other brands and make a decision as to which is larger.
I should start a new university, where the new major will be: Suing People.
You got beat to it. Most law schools already have fantastic litigation courses.
Remember McDonalds with the old lady burning herself with coffee? She won and McDonald had to become captain obvious with that label on the the coffee cup.
Why does everyone mention this and no one actually knows all of the facts. She suffered second degree burns from her hips to her knees with permanent neurological damage. She was handed a coffee cup without the lid being fully seated properly causing the lid to fall off. $1,000,000 was appropriate, IMHO.
No, but if there aren't any developers signed up or any more discussion in a week, it really will be another DOA project on sourceforge.
The idea here isn't to create an X alternative, but an X replacement. Something modern, fast, light. I know everyone is going to chime in with 'XFree86 is good enough. And it isn't bloated or slow'. It is an excellent piece of software, but it isn't as fast as it could be. There are commercial X11 servers for Linux that really are as fast as advertised, I've seen it in person. Another of the 'problems' with XFree86, and even commercial X11 servers is that they don't take advantage of modern GPU's. Granted, OpenGL isn't an ideal method of rendering *everything*, but for some things, it would offload much of the graphics subsystem from the CPU. There are cases where OpenGL would be much slower, but with a little smart programming, this can be avoided. OpenGL also has the added benefit of adding some eye-candy features like transparency without taxing the CPU. Anti-aliased vector fonts are easy with OpenGL.
The only problem I see here, besides the usage of XML(it's flexible and easy to program, but too large as a metadata medium), is that many have tried this before and failed. Only time will tell.
I'll give it a week before declaring it 'YetAnotherDOA sourceforge project'.
I dunno about forecasts. But if they hooked up a couple of them in the same country it'd probably bring down the power grid :-}
I have to admit, I can see why retailers would want to exploit RFID tags. It would save them a lot of money in labor, as well as reducing the load on any loss prevention manager. This boils down to either more profits or lower consumer costs.
I have three opinions about them.
1) Everything you buy that contains an RFID tag must be properly labeled. The consumer should know what they are buying.
2) There should be a way to easily disable them after taking the product home. Ideally, they should be deactivated on your way out the door, but there are complications(non-technical) hindering the store's choices.
3) Any product that has a unique characteristic or property shouldn't have an RFID tag. For instance, if I go to the local Sears, Home Depot, Lowes, whatever and buy a personal fire safe(w/o the changeable combinations), I wouldn't want the safe to have it's combination somewhere indexed to the RFID chip's serial number. There is a greater security risk here, this is but one example.
Who cares?
I wanna know how many *elephants* that is.
Even if they were right, I would still feel contempt for the way that they have mannered themselves. If they are right, and they have known for a year that Linux had offending code, they still did nothing to mitigate the damages done to their company. I feel the company is obviously damaged anyways; anyone who read their 10Q knows it to be true. If there were offending code in Linux, it is being made a scapegoat for the failing business that is SCO.
Is SCO right? Only time will tell. When they begin to attempt the extortion of Linux users and companies next month, the backlash will start a series of actions that will have some finality to this matter. And from that point forward, Linux will either repair, remove, and move on, or Linux users of the world will laugh SCO right out of the stock market and the IT world.
For me, I don't care which happens as long as this is over. Neither outcome will affect me personally. Worst case scenario, my kernel is illegal and I fix it myself or download a patched kernel. Could I continue using a bad kernel without getting caught?
Probably. But I won't. I, like most other Linux users, take pride in OSS.
I make no judgements. I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was making an observation of the present. I fully agree with you that. The only sad part is for those whom a good education isn't available. I don't support communism - That encourages everyone to work as little as possible leading to an overall loss of productivity. I fully support capitalism. I just think the government should do more to provide an adequate education giving people the *opportunity* to do something with themselves. I'll take myself as an example:
I'm pretty intelligent. I have an IQ of 151. I was born to a very poor family, who is now very well off. I don't see a dime of it. I'm still broke, but doing better for myself than my parents did for me when I lived with them. I was given a very thorough education, right up to high school. Unfortunately, I had to work all through high school, all while amassing debt for things like a car, credit cards to furnish my apartment, this that and the other thing. When you have to pay your way while doing the whole education thing, it sets a person up very poorly for going to college. I did get a state grant, but it didn't get me very far. I found myself having to work even more to pay off the debt I worked up during high school while trying to attend college.
I bet you can guess how that worked out. Now, a lot of my friends who had more well off parents are graduating college, getting decent(not great) jobs, making their $32-45K meanwhile I'm stuck at a shit job barely paying off the debt I have. At the rate things are moving, I should be able to start college again in the next 2-3 years. This time, with zero debt and a little more free time. The sad thing is I'm a pretty good programmer in C/C++. I'm an experienced web designer who once made a lot of money off of one good contract, but then business declined, never found good work again. I'm decent in PHP, great in ASP/VBScript, fairly versed in Javascript/DOM2, I know a quite a lot about SQL. And I have no degree. That's why I work a shit job in manufacturing. Because I didn't have the ability to go to college. It should be more accessible, but the trend is it is getting *less* accessible. Tuition goes up as local/state colleges lose funding, class schedules are cut, classes get larger, teachers are slightly more apathetic. Overall, the quality is down and the price is up. Now where's that leave me when I can finally afford to get my BS in EE(that's what I really want)?
Even moreso now, it is rare that an uneducated person ends up being rich. In the past, a hard worker with a few lucky breaks could do very well. Now, you must have one of two things:
1) Really good luck
2) A good education
Even a very intelligent person these days has a hard time getting anywhere without a degree. Yet, if your parents didn't do well, you probably won't either. Thus, the cycle repeats.
Excellent post. I have a hard time remembering facts sometimes, but this would seem to support both of our anecdotal evidence.
Part of the reason the poor can afford more now is due to technological and manufacturing advances. Better cars for cheaper. TV sets for rock bottom prices. Yes, even the poor can buy what would have been luxuries 40 years ago. But, as this article states, they are still doing worse off than years ago.
Interestingly enough Bill G. has more than twice what Paul Allen has in his piggy bank, but Paul Allen seems to be in the newspaper around here(Pacific Northwest) a lot more than Bill. Usually, it's either because he owns the Portland Trailblazers, or it's because he gave a bunch of money to some random charity. He seems like a really good guy.
Shoot, I've had that many times. For free.
;-{
Now three girls at once? I'm still looking. I keep it on my christmas list, but my roommates keep telling me they can't find another girl whose worthy
Because in the past, it was Media tycoons, publishers, industrialists, bankers who got rich. It often took them their entire lives, their childrens lives. It was 'old money'. Now, it seems many on this list managed to go from zero to super rich in a matter of a few years. Look at Bill Gates. He hasn't always been rich, now he has more money than anybody. It seems the seperation between rich and poor is getting far wider. Most people scrape by, day by day, week at a time. The super rich have more money than they could spend in a lifetime, 10 lifetimes. This isn't the bad part, the world has always been like this. The bad part, it seems the middle class seems to be getting smaller. In times of recession, those who were once well to do are now finding themselves just as broke as the rest of us while the super rich just keep getting even more obscenely wealthy. And it is always on the backs of the poor that they tread.
Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before.
Really? Are you sure? The socioeconomic seperation that existed in the 60's and 70's wasn't nearly as pronounced as it is today. Have you seen the unemployment rate recently? Millions of jobless people. Declining benefits, declining salaries, shaky job security, citizen's apathy for the declining political system. I can't say I'd agree with you.
Ahem, Slackware is very much old-school. A lot of it, especially the scripts are very obviously BSD-ish, which would make it exactly 'the way things used to be done'. Anyone coming from a commercial Unix would find the transition easiest with Slackware. You are right in that Gentoo is a little off the wall, but Slackware is very traditional in many aspects.
For a RedHat user, you sure don't seem to like much about the way it's set up. You sound like a hands-on, technically inclined person. IMO, you should consider Slackware if you decide to try anything else. It is by far the most stable of all the distributions out there and if you know anything about the workings of Linux, you will find it very easy. All of the packages are up to date and easy to install.
I don't personally like RPM either, so rpm2tgz is my friend. It does include RPM if you ever need it though. The BSD style init scripts are easy to configure. The file placement scheme is very well thought out, making modifications, program install/updates, whatever a breeze. The distro setup program is very easy to use making package selection a no-brainer, as well as setting up networking, pretty console fonts, whatever else you need.
For anyone who want's to get into the inner workings of Linux and really understand what's going on 'under the hood' so to speak, Slackware is a good place to start. It's easy to use, yet flexible enough to get real work done. What more could you ask for?
</plug>
The point of this regulation wasn't to limit the states rights, it is to protect the citizens from unfair and discriminatory taxing. That's always a good thing. If this goes through, states can still tax you on things like online shopping, as long as it's a sales tax that applies to everyone. I would hate to go to amazon or ebay and get a message that they were collecting a 'Special Internet Tax' for whatever state of %(arbitrary#). Imagine checking your DSL or cable bill and finding a special tax line:
.005 per MB
Network Access Tax: $23.30 @
I don't think many people would put up with it. It's good that this bill came along. Along the same lines, it's also sad that they had to specifically prevent states from implementing discriminatory taxes as sources of revenue. Look at the Seattle dime espresso tax and the turnout; 67% of citizens said no. If states went along and implemented an internet usage tax, it's nearly a sure bet that zero of that revenue would be used to support the internet. It would have been especially unfair.
I've done this once, and I'll never do it again. But...
It was organized. I had one tail about a half mile behind me for part of the journey and one lead who left several minutes before me. We had radios to keep in constant communication. The lead informed me of road and weather conditions, presence of police or other cars, slick spots, pot holes, and gravel. This was also on a route on I84 that I had driven several dozen times so I knew every turn. I didn't attempt any turns at 167, I slowed to about 110 for the corners. I did end up getting a ticket despite having a lead car. I was paced by air patrol at 130+, according to the state patrol officer that pulled me over. The lead car didn't spot the patrol car because they were hidden behind a sign on an off-ramp. I was gunned at 93 and got a fat ticket. He complemented me on my car, said I was a good driver, and insulted my judgement to try this on this particular interstate. He did mention that typically, people that do this go into southern Oregon where there are many infrequently patrolled and straight highways. At the same time, he also mentioned that if he'd gunned me at 100+, the wreckless driving would have been automatic and he would have taken my car and possibly my license. As it turned out, I got nothing more than a excess speed ticket and the loss of two points off my license. This was all done in my Supra, with brand new, balanced Y speed rated tires which are positively the weakest link in any road car at this speed.
Was it dangerous? Hell yes, but not necessarily more dangerous than any sanctioned road race and far, far safer than the stupid street racers I'm surounded by in my home town. If you don't believe me, check out sanctioned races like the Silver State Classic in Nevada. That particular race is organized every year with the permission of and help from Nevada State Patrol.
You are correct that there are always factors not under the driver's control and that is a risk. It was minimized in every way possible and it turned out ok. For some, it doesn't and they crash and burn. When I made the decision to try this, I decided at the same time that the only person I was willing to endanger was myself. I was actually in a safer position than the lead car who limited their speed to just over 100 MPH. This person had also driven this section of the freeway many times, but this didn't negate much of the danger of driving that fast.
All I can say now is, it was fun once. Never again.
Darl McBride has got to be the most flamboyant retarded CEO ever. I don't mean that funny-ha-ha either. He really is very deluded.
:), I know the Linux community will replace as needed and carry on. Life will go on. I just wish SCO, and more specifically Darl McBride, would STFU until the lawsuits are settled. I certainly can't be the only person sick to death of hearing about SCO every fucking day.
On a side note, anyone who does business related to Linux can sue SCO, and probably win. I'm surprised a gag order hasn't been ordered. Usually, when a lawsuit is filed, both parties are very hush-hush because if they lose, any statements made before the judgement regarding the outcome can become a liability. On that note, SCO has racked up a hell of a lot of liability. Red Hat is very much within their right as SCO is interfering with the business operations of any company that relies on Linux. If(when?) SCO loses their lawsuit against IBM, every press release regarding the copyright violations of SysV code in Linux will become libelous, and the company will sink like a concrete shoed mobster, straight to the bottom. SCO's activity during the last six months may also land Darl in jail for mail fraud(Linux license sale offers or requests by mail). Darl should be careful what he says. Everyone in the Linux community was a little miffed at first because it appeared that IBM wasn't vocally supporting the community when in reality, they were in cautious mode.
Win or lose, right or wrong, I just don't care. Even if SCO wins(doubtful, SCO's actions are like a fireant biting a gorilla
I drive a pimped out 88 Toyota Supra Turbo with over 370 hp. I've never gone 215, but I've seen others do it in person(Top Fuel dragsters at Woodburn dragstrip in Oregon state). I've also taken my supra to 167 MPH on Interstate 84. I didn't kill anyone. Not even close, because I am a smart driver. When you are the only one on the road, suicide is the worst that can happen.
Having read about this case in my local newspaper, I think the police were actually correct in their usage of this technology and the judge fouled it up. The judge ruled that the warrant for the usage of the GPS tracker wasn't right. That's messed up. The police suspected that this guy killed a(his?) kid so they got a warrant and put a GPS tracker on his car. The guy leads them out to where he buried the body.
He says he found the child dead already, in bed. Got scared. Went out and buried the body. Right. I believe it, don't you?
I think this is a case of technology being useful when applied lawfully. As long as there is judicial protection from unlawful surveilance, I'm all for this new technology. With a proper warrant, this might be a highly effective tool.
It's hard to make a distinction here, as some convicted sex offenders are required to carry GPS monitors on their ankles. This shouldn't be any different.
If the guy walks, I'm gonna be f*ckin pissed.
I'm not sure if it's just in my home state or this is federal law, but my employer is required to keep all company-issued applications for employment on file for a minimum of one year. This is *a law*. I think it's WA state law, but it could be federal. Resumes are not kept on file unless the employee is hired, and even then only for reference.
People gotta eat...
Nah... There's well over 1 billion people out there that prove every day that you don't have to eat very often to live. If famine is good enough for a billion people, why not give it a try for a day or two, try it on for size.
Wrong side of the country. Same corner, opposite side. But yes, I am still developing my sense of humor as an adult.